Stevens is just senile. Who cares what he says?
While it is certainly ironic for a jurist as liberal as Mr Justice Stevens to complain about the Court "creating a hitherto unknown constitutional right," I have to applaud him for being honest and forthright about his real goal, and about the true remedy for his complaint: the repeal of the Second Amendment. The usual remedy of liberals to constitutional difficulties is either to ignore the Constitution altogether or to have liberal jurists re-interpret the Constitution to remove the difficulties. Stevens's tack in this op-ed is more straightforward: implicitly acknowledging that the law is not on his side, he advocates simply changing the law.
He is, of course, wrong (and the majority of the Roberts Court was right in DC v Heller) about the proper interpretation of the amendment. The burden of the "well-regulated militia" clause is that the citizenry at large has the right and duty to defend the liberty of "a free state" against an overweening central government or any tyranny; and having that right and duty, they should not be deprived of the means to fulfill it.
The Second Amendment, properly interpreted, is no bar against reasonable regulation and licensure of firearms, including a regime a good deal more strict than what we have now. But that is not the goal of the gun control movement (the rhetoric of "common-sense gun regulation" notwithstanding). The goal was well-expressed by a sign that some of the protesters carried at last weekend's marches: "Disarm America". To achieve that goal, stricter regulation consistent with the Second Amendment is insufficient. The Amendment must be repealed.
I don't agree with the goal of "disarming America," and I believe that the entire Bill of Rights (including the Second Amendment) should be sacrosanct. But I applaud Mr Justice Stevens for his honesty in clarifying that this is a goal of the gun control movement.
Why should we applaud people who are wrong, yet honest about it, on an issue? Do we applaud abortionists because they're at least honest as if their "honesty" somehow makes what they do less reprehensible and less terrible? Similarly, do we grant passes to heretics like Arius or Nestorius because they were honest, yet totally wrong, about what the Church has rightly taught? If a person means to do wrong to someone else, in whatever manner, should we applaud him because he did it openly and condemn all the more that sought to do so with deceit and subterfuge? Means don't justify ends. Just because a person is openly wrong does not deserve any props as far as I am concerned.
